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Modern Description: Serra Maggiore is a site just over 5 kilometres to the south of Monte Coppolo and 10 kilometres from the Ionian coastline. It is situated on a hill overlooking the valley of the Canna and San Nicola rivers. Much of the site visible today is the remains of a medieval town built (presumably) directly on top of the Lucanian site. There are some very large natural looking boulders along the eastern perimeter of the site that have been identified as part of a polygonal Lucanian wall line. Serra Maggiore really has only one other strong visual association with a contemporary fortified site, ‘Timpa della Bufaleria’, which is much smaller in size but has a far greater viewshed over the surrounding territory than Serra Maggiore and seems to have played a defensive ‘lookout’ roll for it. This greatly extended viewshed which ‘Timpa della Bufaleria’ gave to Serra Maggiore is of special importance along the valleys of the San Nicola and Canna rivers which seemed to form two of the main access routes to Serra Maggiore from the Ionian Coast. This was important as Serra Maggiore itself has no view over either of these routes and ‘Timpa della Bufaleria’, at just over a kilometre away, was in a prime position to relay information about movement along these valleys. Moreover ‘Timpa della Bufaleria’ had extensive views over the Ionian Sea and could have presumably reported on ship movements along the coastline including those around nearby Greek Heraclea. Conversely Serra Maggiore had a very weak visual relationship with nearby Monte Coppolo and they were only intervisible from very small sections of wall line and ‘Timpa della Bufaleria’ has no intervisibility with Monte Coppolo at all. Given these considerations it would seem that Serra Maggiore’s visual relationship with the ‘Cersosimo’ visibility network, although it existed, was not strong and the focus of its outlook was to the north and east not the Sarmento valley, Cersosimo and Monte Coppolo.

Info: Myers Lucania

Brett Andrew Myers, Visual Connectivity and Control in Ancient Lucania, MPhil thesis 2018, Univ. of Sydney

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